David,
One hears tales of thermostats failing in open, closed and midway
positions. If any doubt, it's easy enough to replace it and its gasket.
I have heard of situations similar to yours in which the problem was
dilute anti-freeze. If you use Prestone in a 50/50 mix, you should be
protected down to -30 or so. But, and this is a worrisome thing to me,
more and more on the store shelves one finds Prestone "pre-mixed", which
is already a 50/50 mix. Thus, if one pours in the usual quantity of AF
and adds water, he gets a 25/75 mix by accident. Yes, the Prestone jugs
are labelled, but it's not all that obvious to one who is in a hurry at
the WalMart.
Water pumps can fail, but it's not frequent that they fail suddenly,
and seems to me that if that were to happen in the cold weather you have
that there would be adequate circulation to keep the gauge sender in
normal range and that there would be noticeable warmth at the top tank of
radiator. Another supposition is that if the coolant were to have
frozen in the water pump and the belt were tight enough to spin the
shaft, that the drive pin could have broken leaving the shaft to spin
inside the impeller. Doesn't seem likely, though.
Let us know what the problem turns out to be.
You sure don't want to crack the head. Yesterday I learned that the
12H2389 head on my 18V584Z engine is cracked, an invisible-to-the-eye 2"
crack on the top surface, guide side, between the raised part of casting
and the raised circle. It was detected by magnaflux. The shop says that
this is comparatively easy to drill, peg, heat and weld, but I am having
them magnaflux a 12H2923 head in hopes that it will be OK.
Interestingly, this cracked head never gave evidence of leaking-no cream
goo in the filler cap, normal oil appearance, no oil in coolant.
Bob
.
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:20:15 -0700 "Councill, David"
<dcouncill@msubillings.edu> writes:
> A slow week or two with the list so I will throw in today's MG
> problem.
> > Its been almost a month since I've driven my MGS due to cold weather
> or snow, but today I finally decided to take the 67 BGT for a drive to
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